TOWARD MOSCOW 7

My personal grievances and resentments of the night
before were instantly forgotten in the face of this
simple and humane attempt on the part of the govern-
ment to deal adequately with a social problem com-
monly neglected elsewhere.

Such contrasts are a daily occurrence in the Soviet
Union, Barbarous medieval discriminations alternate
with acts of most enlightened justice. The foreign ob-
server is constantly either appalled or gratified. He
finds himself uttering a terrific indictment of the Soviet
regime at one moment and apologizing or even de-
fending it, the next.

I ENTERED Russia by way of Poland.
Beyond Warsaw, five or six hours' ride in the direc-
tion of the Soviet frontier, the picturesque peasant
countryside underwent a transformation. The Polish
terrain assumed more and more the aspect of a mili-
tary zone. Slonim, the last large Polish city, two hours
by train from the Russian border, bristled with soldiers
and officers.
A Polish official, speaking in German, proudly
characterized his country as a foremost "military
state'* (militaerstaat). The territory through which
we were passing, he advised me, would be the Ar-
mageddon of the coming war "between civilization
and communism."
That a war between Russia and the rest of the